Effects of Smoking
What are the Smoking Facts
Can cigarettes steady the nerves and allow a moment of relaxation under the most stressful of circumstances?
Well, that’s what many people wanted to believe. But it’s actually physically impossible to physically relax and smoke.
Why?
Because cigarettes contain nicotine, a powerful stimulant. Like all stimulants, once ingested, they cause your heart rate to go up about 10 beats per minute, your blood pressure goes up, the oxygenation in your blood stream drops, and you experience ‘vaso-constriction’ where your veins and arteries partially shut down.
Less than 100 years ago, cigarettes were rare. Then the tobacco companies and their advertisers began making the most outrageous claims: even suggesting that good looks and better health could come from smoking. They’ve actually convinced tens of millions of people that it’s “cool” to put all kinds of toxins and poisons in your body and perhaps kill yourself slowly.
Smoking Kills
The numbers are staggering. Both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Association agree: every year, smoking kills more than 276,000 men and 142,000 women. Smoking has been proven, not once but many times, to cause:
At least 10 forms of cancer, from lung cancer to pancreatic cancer.
Smoking causes heart disease and arterial disease.
Respiratory diseases are the reward you gain from smoking, including emphysema and chronic airway obstruction.
According to the U.S. Surgeocn General, the effects of smoking kill more Americans than AIDS, alcohol, drugs, car accidents, murders, suicides, and fires combined.
The Social Stigma of Smoking
If the smoking statistics are not enough, there is the social stigma. City after city, business after business, and restaurant after restaurant have enacted smoking bans. Many employers will no longer hire smokers.
And with smoking going out of fashion, your non-smoking friends now react to you as though you smell bad and have a filthy habit. To them your clothes smell bad, your house smells bad, and they may even go home and launder their clothes after being near you.
It’s obviously worth it to get smoking out of your life! Why wait, call us today at 281-996-8000.
The High Cost of Smoking
(Quoted from an article by Hilary Smith)
An extra pack of mints or gum a week adds up to about $50 per year. Need your teeth whitened once a year? Brite Smile, which has offices across the country, retails its service for around $600. Most professional-grade teeth whitening products retail for a minimum of $200.
Dry-cleaning bills are likely to be higher also. Clean that suit one extra time a month at a cost of $12 and there goes another $144.
So how much is smoking costing you?
What does a pack of cigarettes cost a smoker, the smoker’s family, and society? A longitudinal study on the private and social costs of smoking calculates that the cost of smoking to a 24-year-old woman smoker is $86,000 over a lifetime; for a 24-year-old male smoker the cost is $183,000.
The total social cost of smoking over a lifetime — including both private costs to the smoker and costs imposed on others (including second-hand smoke and costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security) — comes to $106,000 for a woman and $220,000 for a man.
That makes the cost over a lifetime of smoking almost $40.00 per pack!
You can learn more in The Price of Smoking by Frank A. Sloan, Jan Ostermann, Christopher Conover, Donald H., Jr. Taylor, and Gabriel Picone.
Smoking Cessation made easy. If you want to stop smoking, call us today at 281-996-8000.
If you’re still sitting on the fence, learn the benefits of quitting.
